Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4Xud2Gqoxk
The Joe Rogan Experience and one of the things that I want to talk to because I haven't talked to you since the pandemic start last time I talked to you was screwball right like how long ago was that oh yeah what 2019 yeah right before the [ __ ] hit the fan that was the last time we talked when we were talking about that documentary and then when all this happened and so much of the wackiness and the you know the controversies coming out of Florida like you embrace the chaos of Florida yeah Florida [ __ ] is our genre and it's our also our top export I think is as well it's really what we provide the rest of but for you you I mean look about how much your work is about Florida the cooking Cowboys series you know all the stuff on A-Rod like all the there's there's so much of your your work the petrifying I'm a Florida native you know in a lifelong Miami and I think the petrifying thing that I've learned through the years and it's not my theory uh TD almond called Miami the city of the future and effectively the Florida of today is the America of tomorrow and more importantly the Miami of today more specifically the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow so if you want to know what uh challenges will face or calamities will befall us as a nation in the Years or even decades to come you need to only look at the canary in the coal mine which is which is South Florida do you think that's because of it's very vulnerable to climate change first of all right like there's there's estimates about how long Miami can last yeah but not good yeah they don't they think you got about two decades right isn't that the the current thought I'm a renter let me put you that way I've lived there my whole life I don't own any property in Miami it's probably a good move I'm not bullish it does it seems like it's gonna go underwater right yeah it'll definitely be underwater it's just a question of when it's all like there like the the ground itself is very porous is that correct yeah I mean you know we had uh uh reclaimed Wetlands that's Miami Beach that's where Champlain Towers is reclaimed Wetlands what does that mean it was [ __ ] mangroves swamps yeah swamp and that we reclaimed which means
we filled it in and there's still porous Limestone underneath that Champlain Towers only had water coming at it from the front the back above and below but other than that it was totally dry this is the tower that collapsed yeah I mean just battered we're getting battered they were on that porous Limestone yeah that was oh yeah yeah built on reclaimed wetlands and so I'll tell you right now as we speak this is the um the king Tides you know what the king tides are no they happen every September October and November not the entire time but there's like a week here a week in there for those three months it is what we call Sunny Day flooding so it has to do with the tides it has to do with the the distance between the Sun and the Moon and the Earth and it floods in the sunlight it we can get as much as 12 inches 12 inches above the highest high tide of the year so it's just it's not from rain it's not now here's the problem we're still in Hurricane Season which means rain exacerbates it inclement weather can we're totally [ __ ] when it rains on top of the king tires but this is just like a day like you just if you were in a low-lying area or Waterfront or Ocean Front bay front that's just what sunny day it's perfectly it could be perfectly beautiful and you could have as much as 12 inches above the highest high tide so it's just an unusual level of the ocean yeah just a quirk of of the tides it happens every year uh off and on for three months yeah that's in in the dis we call it sunny day flooding that's the thing that we have there I mean you know Miami We Make It Rain but we now we have sunny sunny day flooding is a thing and there's nothing they can do like New Orleans like put up some sort of a some sort of a wall damn so the the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a kind of futuristic post-apocalyptic you know after the flood well pre-flood kind of a wall and Miami said no gracias no thank you we don't want that we'll we'll we'll fend for ourselves did they say no because it was too expensive or did they say no because no the Army Corps of Engineers I think was good I think it was gonna be federally funded they just didn't want this unsightly unseemly kind of a wall in our beautiful town and but what they did want is they wanted a
signature Bridge we're building like this 800 million dollar bridge that we don't need that's but it's it's super it's super pretty as we say in Miami it's super pretty and somebody probably got a good deal oh yeah oh you better believe the contractors that's the thing that's why the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow it's really the corruption dysfunction and non-stop construction that's really what it is it's this Anything Goes Wild West kind of mentality because you know I I said this before on the show you know La is where you go and you want to be somebody New York is where you go when you are somebody and Miami is where you go and you want to be somebody else it's always been a sunny place for shady people the Florida man phenomenon it's just like you know we just if you have it's not New England it's not what's your name who's your daddy everyone's Nouveau riche in Miami so no one cares where your money came from as long as the booze is flowing and everybody's dancing the music's going nobody gives a [ __ ] and it's always been that place it's always been that party place you were you were telling me before about how during uh it was it was it the 70s the 80s these recording artists would go down to Miami yeah like listen uh Miami is just it's America's Casablanca you know and so some of the biggest records of all time um I mean back when that was a business like you could sell tens of millions of albums uh everybody went to Miami Eric Clapton was one of the first Jimmy Buffett the Bee Gees the Eagles Crosby Stills Nash and Young on the Allman Brothers Fleetwood Mac and they were doing all those records that we all still know today from the 70s they recorded a mixed or mastered at least in part um uh uh uh Glenn Frey and Don Henley wrote the lyrics to Hotel California in a rented mansion on Miami Beach where it had that had been the love nest um of Howard Hughes and Eva Gardner uh uh Winston Churchill used it as a winter home uh and um the Watergate burglars and Howard hunt used it as well and then um Steven Stills used it he was hanging out there with like Shel Silverstein they were it was like a weird scene and then uh eventually the Eagles came down to do Hotel California and wrote the
lyrics they locked themselves these two guys in a [ __ ] room and they they just the housekeeper left sandwiches and and drinks at the door because the door was closed and they came down in bathrobes one day with with legal pads yeah legal pads and said we have it we have we have we have the lyrics and so everybody everybody and it was a communal scene too it's kind of like your place with the you know everybody just sort of like stops by and get tested people stop by and again it was like that because you had all these artists in every route like so there was pick up basketball games outside you'd drive up and there'd be the Bee Gees playing The Allman Brothers playing Eric Clapton in a pickup basketball game and they to this day criteria Studios they have a wooden upright piano and the rumor has it one day there was an artist I won't mention the name was playing and had a baggie of cocaine on the top of the piano and he was playing and the baggie fell open fell boom puff of smoke on the keys of the piano appropriately and you grab the bag and Salvage what he could and then for the next several months the people at the studio who were to that would stick a straw between the keys on the on the piano and try to mostly dust they were probably snorting but like we're just trying to salvage whatever they could from there so the the the joke was that um they had a a line item on the uh the bills because that's the thing they were away from the watchful eyes and ears of the labels which were all based in New York and la so they would go to Miami and no one knew what the [ __ ] was going I didn't have publicists or producers from or Executives rather from from the recording studio so they would send them bills to pay for the studio time there'd be a line item for cocaine but you couldn't say cocaine um and I think by the way cocaine was at that time was probably part of the appeal of bringing the artist to Miami to be fair probably right but it was under the the category of piano tuning was was the cookie so you get uh like some you know someone you know accounts and a record label call up and say hey I have a question about this this invoice um it's it's there's five thousand dollars here for piano tuning but
there's only one ballad on the album so this with all this [ __ ] piano tuning there's there was an act oh God I'm not gonna say it but there was a band who came down in the 80s to record a criteria and then they came down again in the 90s and the guy who runs the studio Trevor his mom was the manager before him so he was a little kid running around this scene if you can imagine a little kid in Miami in the 70s running around this scene this is an incredible Place Aretha Franklin did the respect record at criteria James Brown did I feel good recorded that song at criteria it's a really historic place and so he this band comes in and he says the lead singer he says Hey listen I don't know if you remember you were down here 15 years ago whatever back in the late 70s early 80s doing this this record and the singer says I have no memory of that whatsoever except for one thing he said one night apparently we were done recording here and someone took us into the neighborhood it's like in a residential kind of area into the neighborhood to This Woman's house and she brought out a brick of cocaine an entire kilo of cocaine heat so I'd never seen that before she put it down on the coffee table we're sitting on the couch she put it down like this is a big band uh they put it she put it down on the coffee table she cut it open and all I remember from my entire experience in Miami is the smell of that entire kilo of cocaine like just what it feels like when an entire like an entire kilo of cocaine is opened up before you and it hits and it hits you have you ever done Coke never me neither never but hearing that I want to sniff I just want to know take away for that I want to know what that's like watch the entire episode for free only on Spotify